Feline Assistance
by Healer Pomfrey
Summary: Harry gets his revenge on Professor Umbridge, partly unintended and due to his fever, when he suddenly receives feline assistance. Completely AU, WARNING: not nice, not one of my fluffy stories, character death!


**Feline Assistance**  
**by Healer Pomfrey**

_All recognizable characters belong to J. K. Rowling, and I am not earning anything by writing this story.  
I am not a native speaker of English. Please excuse my mistakes._

_**Warning: This is not one of my nice and fluffy stories! Check the warnings in the summary!**_

* * *

Harry slowly dragged himself back to Gryffindor. After his umpteenth detention with Professor Umbridge, from which she had finally released him at midnight, he felt outright ill. Not only his hand was sore, but his head ached, and he felt hot and cold at the same time. _'And I still have to do homework... Potions and Transfiguration,'_ he thought, sighing deeply as he entered the common room.

He let himself sink into a chair next to his best friends, who were casting him worried looks.

"You're late, mate," Ron said, slightly reproachfully. "I was just about to go to bed."

"Harry, are you all right?" Hermione queried in apparent concern. "You don't look well. Show me your hand."

"My hand hurts a bit," Harry admitted in a small voice. "But it's not too bad. I still have Transfiguration and Potions left."

"I'll help you," Hermione offered, while Ron bade his friends good night and retreated to the dormitory.

Two hours of writing down what Hermione dictated him, Harry's homework was finished. "Thank you so much, Mione," he said gratefully, resting his achy head on his Potions book in exhaustion.

"Harry, shall I take you to the hospital wing?" Hermione asked, giving him a sharp look.

"No I'm fine," Harry replied and slowly stood up from his seat. "I'll go to bed. Good night, Mione."

"Tomorrow I'll brew some Murtlap essence for you," Hermione promised, before she retired for the night.

Harry dragged himself into his dormitory, only taking his robes off, before he let himself sink into bed. However, sleep did not come easily. _'I hope I won't get ill,'_ he thought, as he tried to find a cool spot on his pillow. _'Only one more detention tomorrow before Valentine's day, and I certainly don't want to miss going to Hogsmeade with Mione.'_

At four o'clock in the morning, he realised that his hand and head were too sore to sleep. _'I'll just go and brew Murtlap essence for my hand,'_ he resolved and slowly scrambled out of bed, holding on to the wall for a moment, until a bout of dizziness passed that overcame him as soon as he brought himself into an upright position. Pulling one of his warm Weasley jumpers on as well as his robes, he covered himself with the invisibility cloak and returned to the common room.

"Dobby," he called the elf, who would do anything for him. "Can you please take me to the Potions classroom?" he asked his friend, knowing that Professor Snape had surely warded the classroom door against intruders during the night.

"Of course Dobby wills takes Harry Potter to the Potions classroom," Dobby replied eagerly, and an instant later, Harry found himself standing in front of the ingredients cupboard.

"Thank you very much, Dobby," he told the elf, who left with the instruction to call him again when he wanted to return to Gryffindor.

HP

During the following hour, Harry busied himself brewing the Murtlap essence, sighing in relief when the potion turned out as green as it was supposed to be. _'It smells all right too,'_ Harry thought and hurriedly bottled the potion, before he diligently cleaned up the classroom. Deciding not to wake up Dobby again, he quietly left the classroom and hurried away, not bothering if an alarm would go off in the Potions Master's office. _'He can't look through my invisibility cloak anyway,'_ he mused, as he dragged himself out of the dungeons, reducing his speed as he went.

When he reached the entrance hall, he stopped dead in his tracks, as he heard footsteps in front of himself. In the sparse moon light that came in through the windows, he could see someone move in the direction of Mr. Filch's office. _'That's Umbridge,'_ he suddenly realised. _'She probably has more regulations for him to put up on the walls. What a bitch.'_ All of a sudden, a thought crossed his mind. _'It's her fault that I'm feeling so miserable and can't sleep all night. I should really get back to her, before she sacks more teachers and makes others write with such a quill.' _

With his mind clouded from the fever, he raised his wand without properly considering the matter and practised the latest Transfiguration spell that McGonagall had taught her fifth years - changing life objects into other life objects and stun them in order to transfigure them back. _'Oh that really fits her,'_ he mused, contentedly, staring at the pinkish toad on the floor in absolute disgust. The thought _'Should I transform her back or just leave her this way?' _crossed his mind, and he was still pondering the matter, when the decision was suddenly taken out of his hands.

Harry had neither heard nor seen her coming; however, apparently out of nowhere, Mrs. Norris showed up right behind the toad that was sitting there, unmoving. During the following two minutes, he observed with mixed feelings how the cat played with the stunned toad, before she took her treasure with her towards the entrance door.

_'What's she going to do with her?'_ Harry wondered and slowly made his way to the next window, carefully holding on to the wall in order to keep himself upright. _'Where's the toad?'_ he wondered; however, he could only see Mrs. Norris, who was pleasantly licking her lips, before she contentedly proceeded to clean herself from any remaining of her latest treasure.

_'I didn't want to murder her,'_ his mind screamed, as he slowly dragged himself back to the common room, where he spent the next hour bathing his sore hand in Murtlap essence, mulling over what he had done.

"Harry, you're up early," Hermione's voice suddenly penetrated his ears.

Harry looked up in relief upon seeing his best friend. "Mione, Mrs. Norris ate Umbridge," he told her, "and it's my fault."

"Harry, are you delirious?" Hermione asked, taken aback, and an instant later, her cold hand made contact to Harry's forehead, where it lingered for a few seconds. "That's it, Harry. You're burning up. I'm going to take you to the hospital wing," the girl decided.

HP

An hour later, Madam Pomfrey called the Headmaster, the Gryffindor Head and the Potions Master into the hospital wing, where Harry was carefully tucked in a crispy white bed, slumbering.

"Minerva, Albus," Pomfrey spoke up, sounding very angry. "Umbridge has been using a blood quill on Harry. He has deep cuts in his hand, which became so infected that he's running a high fever.

"I'm sorry, I didn't want Umbridge to become eaten by Mrs. Norris," Harry suddenly spoke up, slurring the words.

"What?" McGonagall blurted out, giving the boy a bewildered look.

"He seems to be delirious," Pomfrey said, sighing, "although his fever is not that high."

"Mr. Potter, can you show me the memory?" Snape enquired, staring at the boy.

"Yeah," Harry wearily agreed and thought of the pinkish toad sitting in the entrance hall.

"It seems authentic," Snape informed his colleagues, before he turned back to the fifth-year. "Mr. Potter, can you enlighten us what you've been doing in the entrance hall that early in the morning?"

"I went to the Potions classroom to brew Murtlap essence," Harry admitted in a small voice, before he closed his eyes and drifted back to a much needed healing sleep.

"Well, I can only say good riddance," the Potions Master said dryly. "If that toad was still alive, we'd have to give her a one-way ticket to Azkaban anyway, considering that she made Potter use a blood quill..."

"... and is an unresistered Animagus," McGonagall threw in. "I completely agree with Severus. Should we inform the Minister?"

"No Minerva," the Headmaster replied calmly. "Let's feign innocence and have Fudge try to find out what happened with his High Inquisitor. I don't think anyone at Hogwarts will be sad that she's gone. The students will rather have a huge party today, and we're going to do the same once Fudge has left."

"Poor Harry. He's going to miss all the fun," McGonagall said softly, gently pushing an errant strand of hair out of the boy's face.

**THE END**

_**On request, I wrote a small sequel with Minister Fudge's reaction: "Nothing Ado About Anything".**_


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